Transcript of “How Far Back Could One “Read the Room”?”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Martha. This is Mary Schaefer in Newark, Delaware.
Well, listen, I was watching the movie Maestro about Leonard Bernstein, and I noticed in one scene the Leonard Bernstein character said, I misread the room. And I’m like, wait a second. I have not heard read the room until, I’m just guessing, like 10 years. But I even looked it up. That scene was set in the 60s. And I’m like, did they do that on purpose? Did read the room, has it been around longer than I thought? And so I thought I would ask.
So set the scene for us in the movie. It’s Leonard Bernstein, the composer and conductor. It’s the 1960s. What is happening in the scene?
Yeah, he and his wife are talking about a crucial issue. It looks like maybe like a country home and they’re by the pool. And they’re talking about this issue and he just said, I misread the room, sort of regrettably.
Meaning?
I misunderstood the situation or I misread the situation.
Gotcha.
Yeah. So there was something happening in there and he didn’t intuit what was going on. He did not perceive the realities.
Well, he claimed he did not.
He claimed it. He claimed he did not. We’ll take his word for it. And so for you to read the room means to be able to look at a situation and understand what’s going on.
Right.
Okay. And your concern is that the screenwriters maybe put modern words in his mouth that he couldn’t have said.
I don’t know. It made me think about it because I’ve noticed it in other situations in books or films where they said something. And I’m like, I don’t think that fits this era. And so it just made me ask.
So my question for you is, in an enterprise which is all about faking reality, which is Hollywood, why are you expecting accurate historical language?
No kidding. Well, I did consider, you know, maybe they’re making it, you know, relatable or approachable for, you know, the current audience.
Right. Right?
Yeah. But it did make me wonder about read the room and how long it’s been around.
Yeah. So it’s just an excuse to get on the horn with Martha and Grant, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, it’s a fair question. So let’s put a picture on this then. So read the room exactly. It at least goes back to 1973, to put an exact date on it. But there’s a but there, which is there are other things that you can read that are like rooms. For example, you could read an audience as far back as 1899 with exactly that same connotation.
The Oxford English Dictionary has a definition, which they, it’s in the particular stuffiness of the Oxford English Dictionary, it goes to assess precisely any indications or clues given out by a location, situation, et cetera, in order to decide on a course of action, basically to read a room.
Right. And their earliest dates go back to the 1920s. But like I said, I found it to read an audience go back to 1899. And it’s always about performers or singers or musicians or speakers, comedians, those kinds of people, their ability to get in front of a crowd and figure out the mood or temperament of the crowd. And I feel like that’s the same idea as read the room, even if we’re not using exactly the same language as read the room.
Right. So the question is, do you insist on it be exactly the same word for word read the room?
Do I insist?
Yeah, you personally, Mary.
No, I don’t. I just really wanted someone to talk to about this.
Oh, here we are.
Here you are.
Yeah. No, I’m okay with that. I just wanted to see what somebody else who would know what I was talking about, what they thought about it.
So the other thing to say is when lexicographers, that’s people who compile and edit dictionaries, look at language and we find in first use of a term, say 1973 in this case, we can pretty much bet we haven’t found the first use. We suspect every time that there’s an earlier use out there that it’s simply either A, we haven’t found it yet, or B, we’ll never find it, but it probably existed and is now missing. And you can pretty much assume that you could stretch it out 10 years earlier.
So to answer your original question, could Leonard Bernstein in the 1960s have said, I misread the room? If I found a citation from 1973, then the answer is yes.
Yeah. I’ll go with that.
And that’s reasonable to me. Anyway, Mary, thank you so much for your call. Call us again sometime.
Bye-bye.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
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